Papers I find interesting---mostly, but not solely, in Process Algebra---, and some fun stuff in Mathematics and Computer Science at large and on general issues related to research, teaching and academic life.

Thursday, September 06, 2012

The letter below will be sent to some mailing lists soon. I am posting it here since it is in the interests of the TCS community as a whole to be well represented in this exercise. Despite being amongst the signatories of this letter, I have no academic position in Italy. I am simply an interested observer of academic life in my home country.

Dear colleagues,

The recruitment system for academic staff at Italian universities has
recently been changed. The new procedure requires that academics attain
the so-called National Scientific Qualification in order to take up a
position in an Italian university at the level of associate or full
professor. The qualification is granted by National Committees, one for
each group of disciplines. All committees are made up of five members,
four affiliated to Italian universities and one affiliated to a foreign
university located in an OECD country. Members from foreign universities
must hold a position equivalent to that of a full professor.

We think that it would be very useful for our research community if you
submitted a candidacy to become a foreign member of the National
Committee. If you are interested in doing so, you can register your
candidacy at

To submit your candidacy, you will have to include a curriculum vitae,
the list of scientific publications, the selected disciplinary fields,
the number of citations received by your work and your h-index. As part
of this process, you will be asked to select one or more Italian
Scientific fields from a scroll-down menu (choose at least 01/B1 -
Informatics) and some ERC Scientific fields. (There is a scroll-down
menu for that too.)

Based on this information, the Italian national agency for the
evaluation of universities and research Institutes (ANVUR) will select
at least four possible foreign members for each scientific group. The
foreign member of each committee will then be randomly selected among
those in the lists. The committee will be in service for two years,
during which two rounds of evaluations will be carried out. Names and
CVs of the selected candidates will be published on the ANVUR website.
Members of the evaluation groups will receive an honorarium of 16,000 €
for the whole period, plus expenses.

We hope that you will consider submitting your candidacy.

All the best,
Luca Aceto, Rocco De Nicola, Mariangiola Dezani-Ciancaglini